Linux on Alpha has two and a bit ways to boot:

* arc firmware + milo loader (how I did it)
* srm + aboot loader
* floppy booting, which is effectively DOS format loading of a kernel image
through either SRM or arc firmware booting milo.

AlphaBIOS machines are much harder to boot with. I don't know of any
Unix-like OS (tru64 or otherwise) that uses AlphaBIOS to boot. AlphaBIOS
only inflicts more recent Digital hardware, and generally you can make SRM
run on them (depends on the model). AlphaBIOS and ARC firmware can both boot
NT.

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: port-alpha-owner@netbsd.org [mailto:port-alpha-owner@netbsd.org]On
Behalf Of Ross Harvey
Sent: Wednesday, 30 August 2000 10:22
To: bolo@cs.wisc.edu; port-alpha@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: NetBSD on newer Alpha boxes?


[snip]

I do believe that the intraserver 3140 is based on the "ncr" 53c875 scsi
chip, which is actually sort of our "standard" host adapter.

It's true that PeeCee hardware changes very rapidly; fortunately, the
*other* alpha os kernels don't, so as a general rule netbsd alpha supports
the currently popular-on-alpha pci cards and such.

Actually, the central question you really need to ask is: does it come with
srm or can you get it?   If the hw supports tru64, then it does have srm.
if it supports linux, then it probably has srm. NT uses a different console
that, in general, none of the unix kernels run on.

	Ross